November 25, 2008

Through New Eyes

The header above took a while to get online. I guess I'm rusty with various programs and if you take any kind of break from the Internet, you return to a bunch of new things designed to make it easier. Yet it never seems easier. I kind of liked the "ease" of my website in 1996, where I self-taught myself HTML and had to do everything myself. Now I just tell the magical computer what I want done and it does it. (That doesn't let it be very unique, does it?) Although I still can't tweak this page enough for my tastes and I don't have the time to figure out how that would be possible. And someone else probably wouldn't notice anyway.

Did you notice the words on the header in back of the title are actual previous musings? I sure have been all over the board with my thoughts! It's amazing how different we seem if you go back a few years and read your thoughts. For years I kept a paper journal but it always seemed that by the time I got to the end, the entries I made from the beginning of the book were a different person. That introspective look helped me realize that we can't be sure of how we'll feel about anything in the future. We shouldn't say "never" because we don't know. And hopefully we'll grow and change. That bothers a lot of people, but change is what helps us extract all we can from life and enjoy it. There's so much to enjoy but we get caught up in the daily things and don't even see it.

When I take my two-year-old daughter anywhere, I try to picture seeing things the way she does: with newness and wonder. As adults we assume that everything is static and is the same, but there's a lot to see if we just look at it differently. She points to something with eyes wide open and a huge smile on her face and I realize that the shiny ribbon I passed so many times really is beautiful. Seeing things through new eyes is a great gift.

So just like the times at work that we hate, hate, HATED the newest edition of Quark only to eventually love it too much to update to the even newer edition, I will get to know Word 2007 and Windows Vista and the new blogger template thingy. And I'll probably be blogging about the newest thing next year that doesn't cut it. Unless I start looking through new eyes...